1958, December 1: “A great and indescribable horror” Our Lady of Angels School Fire
On December 1, 1958 sometime after 2:00p.m., a fire started in a trash drum in the basement of a stairwell of the Our Lady of Angels school, 909 N. Avers, in Chicago Illinois. At approximately 2:40 p.m. the first still and box alarms were called in. Engine 85 arrived at 2:44 p.m. By then the fire had burned undetected for 20 minutes.
The fire spread into the stairwells and the second floor corridor, bypassing the first floor where heavy wooden doors leading to the hallway were shut. Hot air and gasses in the basement also filled an open shaft in a nearby wall, ascending two stories inside the walls and filled a cock loft above the 2nd floor ceiling. There, superheated air sparked flames in the north wing of the school. The flames eventually fell into the second floor corridor from ventilator grills where they combined with dense smoke and gasses and made the hall impassable. Inside the classrooms, light fixtures and transom windows exploded before fire broke through the ceiling itself. Children and nuns were trapped. Windows offered the only egress and before any equipment was available for evacuation, children began leaping from them.
The parish priests and civilians who were first on the scene tried to evacuate the building. Engine 85, misdirected to 3808 W. Iowa, expected to find a fire at the parish church. Instead, the fire was raging in the north wing of the U shaped school on Avers, a building erected in 1910. As fireman rushed to the scene, a decision to ignore protocol and immediately request a 5-11 alarm was made. All the available ambulances were also requested.
The fire was brought under control at 3:45 p.m. and the work of recovering bodies began. Ninety two students and three nuns died. One hundred sixty children were saved.
A Blue Ribbon panel was convened by Cook County Coroner, Walter McCarron to investigate the fire. They found it to be of undetermined origin.
The Panel also made recommendations for fire safety in all schools not grandfathered into the 1949 amendment to the Municipal code of Chicago concerning fire protection devices in schools. In 1959, Chapter 78 of the Municipal Code of Chicago was further amended under a heading “Schools” to include the recommendations. Among them were:
1. Enclose all stairwells with fireproof construction and provide fire doors leading into them.
2. Provide fire doors at all corridors and room partition openings.
3. Require automatic fire sprinkler systems in all school buildings.
4. Provide approved automatic internal fire alarm systems linked directly to the Fire department.
The fire at Our Lady of Angels school was suspected to have been intentionally set. Over the years at least two indiduals were closely investigated, confessed and recanted. No one has been charged with the crime.